As well known, rolling bearings are configured with or without a cage. When a cage is used, it assumes, among other things, the function of guiding the rolling bearing elements. The use of a rolling bearing cage can enable the reduction of friction and damping of noises within the bearing. A drawback of using a cage, however, is that a special rolling bearing cage has to be developed and fabricated for each overall size of most of the rolling bearings. It is equally not possible till now to use the same rolling bearing cage for different bearing widths.
German Patent No. 1 105 668 B discloses a prong-type cage that is made of an elastically deformable plastic. However, this prong-type cage cannot be adapted to the length of different rolling elements but is manufactured separately for only one particular length of rolling elements.